Great news for Corosha: With our help the community of Corosha has won the SPDA contest for new private and communal reserves. This means they have $5000 to get specialists to research the forest and register their 2000 ha reserve. Of course we will do everything to help them and hopefully by the end of next year there will be a new reserve to help secure the future of the yellow tailed woolly monkey.

Dr. Anthony Di Fiore and PhD student Christopher Schmitt of New York Universities Molecular Anthropology department came to visit the project and see the monkeys. They also collected fecal samples, for genetic research, from the many groups they encountered, actually managing to collect more samples then expected. We are looking at ways that NYU can collaborate in the project for the future. Hopefully students will come to do thesis research here very soon.

We heard about monkeys that needed rescuing in the city of Neueva Cajamarca and went to check what was going on there. We found a terrible situation, a few ¨mini zoos¨ which had many animals kept in terrible conditions, a circus with a performing spider monkey and the market full with hundreds of wild animal parts such as tapir and bear feet, toucan beaks, dear meat and more, all of which are totally illegal in Peru.

The Nueva Cajamarca police, headed by Major Cesar Ocaña Rivero, together with INRENA from Moyobamba, headed by Cesar Navarro G. and John J. Esteban Romero, quickly agreed to cooperate in rescuing the animals. The next morning we headed out with the police and INRENA and rescued a common woolly monkey from one of the zoos and the spider monkey from the circus. Rescuing the circus monkey was especially important for us as this monkey was most probably watched by thousands of children all over Peru, all of whom could get the impression that monkeys are good as pets which in turn encourages trafficking.

The monkeys are now with IKAMA Peru and seem to be doing great. There is still a lot of work needed to stop the illegal traffic of animals in the area, as well as many other basic problems such as a shortage of rescue canters, which means that there is nowhere to put rescued animals. Also the authorities are totally un-equipped to handle confiscations. For this reason, IKAMA Peru and NPC have decided to put a big effort into working with the authorities to help with capacity building and to provide much needed equipment.